Smarter Life and Work with NFC

 -- Take a look at MWC 2014

From 24^th to 27^th February, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014 had been taking place in Barcelona at the venues of Fira Gran Via and Fira Montjuïc. Like previous congresses, this year, with almost two thousands of exhibitors showcasing their new products and technologies on site, experts and analysts in the mobile industry reported the present of the industry and discussed the future trend of mobile application technology. One of the event highlights this year was the NFC experience on the congress.

Near field communication (NFC) technology is no longer stranger to people nowadays with their smart phones in daily life. This technology is embedded in millions of mobile phones and helps realize the instant and wireless connection and file sharing easily. To this year’s MWC, NFC technology is used during the event for attendees to experience the high-efficient transferring process. It is SIM-based NFC service, offering attendees the event information by them using their handsets to place near the ‘Tap-n-Go’ points set on the venues. What’s more, attendees could use this NFC service to pay for their meal at the venues and even share contact details with each other.

Few months before the congress, there was a NFC challenge set by the GSMA to discover the best ideas of NFC future applying. People can submit their ideas to the committee on how they would use NFC on mobile to interact with people and improve the business. All the submissions are posted online on the website of MWC 2014 and people who won the grand prize got a gold pass of the congress.

For people who has a view even further, NFC is not only a mobile thing. Mikko Nikkanen, the segment development director of SMARTRAC technology group said that it’s a promising future for NFC, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi team together to “form a technology trio of power forwards”. Based on the fact that NFC technology has already embedded in millions of smart phones and there are a huge amount of consumers using different electronic devices, combined with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, NFC will achieve a more efficient and connected system which for example, will include many of devices possessed by everyone in a family. More detailed, people will use this advanced NFC technology to enable rapid, seamless paring, access Wi-Fi networks in public and private locations, switch on devices, transfer content, authenticate products, provide instructions, etc. On another word, it will make your life and work smarter.

In this year’s WMC, we have taken a look at how the NFC technology apply into a big event. With further exploitation of NFC technology and more application integrated with it, event organizers will have plenty of high-tech tools available for smoothing an event. The key to benefit from this is to keep up with constantly updated peak information and apply those that fit the customers’ desire and real needs.

Sources: 

http://mday.mobileworldlive.com/MobileWorldDaily/2014/Preview/index.html

http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/2014-event-highlights/

http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/2014-exhibitors/

Picture1:  http://mobileworldcapital.com/en/article/152

Picture2:  http://mday.mobileworldlive.com/MobileWorldDaily/2014/Preview/index.html

Posted bySang ZHAOandSiqi ZHANG

European Union Places Full Internet Access High on its Agenda

As of 20/09/2010, European Commission has adopted couple of complementary measures to facilitate the roll out and take up of fast and and ultra-fast broadband in EU . The aim of the measures is to provide regulatory certainty , to encourage investment in in high and ultra high speed networks and to ensure that spectrum is available for wireless broadband. The measures aim to help the EU realise the commitments in the digital agenda for Europe to give every European access to basic broadband by 2013 and fast and ultrafst broadband by 2020. Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda said "Fast broadband is digital oxygen, essential for Europe's prosperity and well-being. These measures will help to ensure that Europeans get the first-class internet they expect and deserve,so that they can access the content and services they want".
On average, 94% of Europeans had high-speed broadband access by the end of 2009, but that proportion fell to 80% in rural areas.
The Commission believes that fast and ultra-fast broadband could revolutionise people's lives in the same way that railways did 100 years ago, with applications not just for jobs and businesses, but for health and education as well.
This measure is in response of the Asian competition that benefits of much higher speed internet connection and which puts at disadvantage the European Business and customers..
For example, only 1% of consumers in Europe have a high-speed fibre connection in their homes compared to 12% of Japanese and 15% of South Koreans.
The Commission estimates that between €180 and €270 billion of investment is needed in order to meet the 2020 broadband targets.
However, a recent study shows that, assuming a constant adoption rate up to 2015, broadband development will help create around 1 million jobs in Europe and a broadband-related growth of economic activity of € 850 billion between 2006 and 2015.
The impact on European industry is clearly positive: apart from civil work for networks which has a direct impact on local employment, sales of network equipment will also benefit global European suppliers (like Siemens, Ericsson, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent), as well as telecoms or satellite operators. And areas with advanced broadband connections will see an increase in demand for products and services.

Sources :
http://ec.europa.eu/
http://www.cellular-news.com

The Social Media Revolution

As part of generation Y, we love images. How could we not? We grew up with the television! Nowadays, our thirst for images can be sustained thanks to Internet and cable TV.

We embrace learning with videos, and that’s why we decided to browse Youtube in search of a fun video to share with you. We fell across this montage posted by Socialnomics 09 in association with the HULT International Business School! ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng )

This video montage will keep you on the edge of your seat, thanks to the music, and makes learning fun and exciting with its amusing facts! Did you know that social media overtook pornography as the number one activity on the web? Or that 96% of generation Y has joined a social network?

Indeed, they are amusing facts, but they also empower you with useful knowledge. Why spend millions on television advertising when the positive Return on Investment is lower than 18%?

This video tries to teach sceptics that the future will not be done without social media and that if you are running a business, then you can no longer avoid the obvious: You need to be on social media. This statement may sound evident to you, reader of this blog. But many companies are still not up-to-date. As part of a project we are analysing the internet visibility of the city of Cannes in France. They are nowhere to be seen on Facebook, Twitter and haven’t even posted a promotional video on Youtube!

Internet, smartphones, applications, and social media are growing fast, and if you haven’t caught the train, then this video may make you start running!

Karen Powell and Tiphaine Boucher

The Effects of E-Commerce on Promoting and Marketing Domestic Tourism

Marine BLEVIN & France LEAL

Introduce the article
This article whose title is “The Effects of E-Commerce on Promoting and Marketing Domestic Tourism” has been written by Rachel Levy Sarfin and published on the eHow blog on September 30, 2010. This article discusses the impact of E-Commerce on promoting and marketing domestic tourism.

Summarize the article
E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet. New Information Technologies and Communication, also called NITC, allows E-commerce to exist and to being developed. Accordingly domestic tourism can be promoted and also marketed all around the world and attract a lot of (new) potential consumers. This allows companies to saving money, using the means of communication faster until today, Internet, which facilitates the work of Tour Operators for their campaigns. Therefore people have an access to search or even book for a journey at anytime and anywhere online.

Relevance of the article to the course
This article is relevant for several reasons. It allows taking in consideration that promoting and marketing domestic tourism have lots of impacts on E-Commerce, which is an original way to communicate. We discovered in addition in class that it allowed gathering and connecting with worldwide potential customers, just as says the article. Of course nowadays “millions of people” are using and do have access to Internet which makes it easier for companies to post their ad in websites of their choice. Moreover there is also a significant element which allows companies to save their money. Creating a website is becoming cheap today which is accessible to every organization who wishes to build an online business. This can bring at the end a panel of many services, the key word being attracting as many people as possible. Therefore this allows at the end to promote and market all day long thanks to Internet which is the faster way to communicate. Of course the speed, the quick refreshment of the pages and the quick link which exist between customers and companies allows the business not to die.

Opinion on the article
This article is quite short but is very clear. Although it gives us a quiet complete overview thanks to relevant information about Internet and the business opportunities that a company can get by integrating the E-Commerce in its strategy, the author could have mentioned and briefly described more impacts for the Business to Business (B2B) aspects (for example the openness to a possible professional network, such as trading between producers and intermediaries and transactions between producers towards the final product).